Don't mind it if it's cosmetic or whatever only. I suppose you can choose to further support the development etc. But I dead against any sniff of locked/unlocked content via microtransaction or advantage over others especially in MP

"That's a sea change in our business. Recurrent consumer spending is 42 percent of our net bookings in the quarter. It's been transformative for us."

And Take-Two isn't alone -- just earlier today Ubisoft reported its latest quarterly earnings, and "player recurring investment" revenue was a big chunk of its revenue.

"One of the things we've learned is if we create a robust opportunity, and a robust world, in which people can play delightfully in a bigger and bigger way, that they will keep coming back. They will engage. And there is an opportunity to monetize that engagement," added Zelnick. "There's a lot of room for growth. This is just the beginning."

So that's Take2 and Ubisoft both reporting that microtransactions make up nearly half of their net income nowadays.

Another decade and we'll be back to classic arcade territory where you pay for continues and such. 5 years ago, EA CEO John Riccitiello talked about the possibility of even charging people for ammunition in shooters. We are moving closer inch by inch towards that day and people won't even notice when it arrives because these large publishers will have spent years slowly grinding away at our wallets until we just accept everything as the status quo.

They don't care about how much it may compromise the user experience, it already has in plenty of multiplayer titles that are pay-to-win. So long as a select market of their users are stupid enough to keep shelling out for these things it is only going to get worse and worse for the rest of us who just want to play decent games. They hit a proverbial goldmine when they realised how well in-game transactions worked, and as this chap says, this is just the beginning of them bleeding the well dry.

"That's a sea change in our business. Recurrent consumer spending is 42 percent of our net bookings in the quarter. It's been transformative for us."

And Take-Two isn't alone -- just earlier today Ubisoft reported its latest quarterly earnings, and "player recurring investment" revenue was a big chunk of its revenue.

"One of the things we've learned is if we create a robust opportunity, and a robust world, in which people can play delightfully in a bigger and bigger way, that they will keep coming back. They will engage. And there is an opportunity to monetize that engagement," added Zelnick. "There's a lot of room for growth. This is just the beginning."

So that's Take2 and Ubisoft both reporting that microtransactions make up nearly half of their net income nowadays.

Another decade and we'll be back to classic arcade territory where you pay for continues and such. 5 years ago, EA CEO John Riccitiello talked about the possibility of even charging people for ammunition in shooters. We are moving closer inch by inch towards that day and people won't even notice when it arrives because these large publishers will have spent years slowly grinding away at our wallets until we just accept everything as the status quo.

They don't care about how much it may compromise the user experience, it already has in plenty of multiplayer titles that are pay-to-win. So long as a select market of their users are stupid enough to keep shelling out for these things it is only going to get worse and worse for the rest of us who just want to play decent games. They hit a proverbial goldmine when they realised how well in-game transactions worked, and as this chap says, this is just the beginning of them bleeding the well dry.

The general gaming community won't even be bothered by it, it's those that make this all viable for them to nickle and dime the rest. No principles, no will power to say "Nah I won't buy this" and actually mean it . Publishers know that we are the most gullible industry to just part cash for pretty much zero extra work.

Thank god my buying of games of the AAA types has all but became zero barring the odd exception over the last few years.

DjchunKfunK wrote:As Sly said there are plenty of great indie games you can all play instead.

That wouldn't be so bad apart from the fact that this is starting to become more and more prevalent in AAA gaming that within a year or two I'm basically going to be restricted to literally only playing indie games.

There are big games being released that I would actually quite like to play, but when they use business models that I consider to be nefarious, greedy or unethical, I simply won't buy them out of principle. I'd probably be quite likely to buy the new Battlefront if it didn't have such an awful, gameplay compromising, system.

I understand full well that this form of monetizing big games whilst actively releasing less titles per year is a way for publishers to bring in steady profits year round without as much risk from the boom and bust cycle that so many studios and publishers have classically faced. But the way they are going about it is greedy and ultimately poisoning this form of media. It's not impossible to handle microtransactions in a fair way that both generates steady revenue and benefits the playerbase, the big publishers are generally not bothering to use them in such a way.